GPU maker named after a Roman vengeance demon, Nvidia, has delivered a big snub to its card making partners and put its new high-end card, the Titan X into the channel

The Titan X founder’s edition will be released in Japan, China and Taiwan in November, with a hefty $1,268 price tag. But Nvidia is releasing the card itself and is benching its chums Asustek, Gigabyte and MSI.

They are miffed and have accused Nvidia of trying to enter the high-end branded graphics card market with its Founder Edition products.

Company CEO Jen-Hsen Huang said that the Founder Edition products are meant to help resolve graphics cards' design problems and are not meant to compete against its partners. Although we have to say we can’t see how this is the case.

In previous Founder Edition products, Nvidia had its downstream graphics card partners help sell them in the channel. With the Titan X, Nvidia will give the card to channel distributers in each region. What this means is that Nvidia can increase the margin it makes from the Titan X, even if it does mean that it will be off Asustek, Gigabyte and MSI’s Christmas card list.

Hopes that the Christmas rush would boost PC sales were dashed when beancounters at Gartner revealed that the situation became even worse. PC sales sank even further during the holiday shopping season, capping the steepest annual decline in PC shipments since desktop and laptop machines began to appear on people's wish lists decades ago.

Gartner cited the mobile shift as the main reason for a seven percent drop in worldwide PC sales from the previous year during the three months ending in December, a period when the demand for electronics is at its peak. It marks the seventh consecutive quarter of decreasing PC sales.

For all of last year, PC sales plunged 10 percent, according to Gartner. Shipments of desktop and laptop computers had never slipped by more than four percent in any other previous year. The other annual declines occurred in 2001, in the midst of a technology bust driven by a collapse in the Internet sector, and in 2012, which marked the early stages of the migration to tablet computers

Around 316 million PCs shipped last year, according to Gartner. That means PCs have backtracked to roughly the same level as in 2009 when the worldwide economy was struggling to shake off the Great Recession. PC sales are expected to deteriorate a little more this year.

The past couple of years have been rough and PC sales are still plummeting despite the fact that PCs were never cheaper, or more powerful for that matter.

However, AMD is reporting that the British system builder market is actually expanding. AMD EMEA channel director Andrew Buxton told Microscope.co.uk that things are changing for the better. He pointed out that local system builders are “holding up really well” as they are very responsive and willing to build to order. Buxton added that some players are coming back to the market which they left years ago.

Buxton added that the desktop market is doing well, presumable when compared to the notebook space. He also argues that strong tablet sales could in fact help desktop sales, as users start to store more content on their PCs.

Last but not least, Microsoft will discontinue support for Windows XP in early 2014 and this move is expected to generate more demand for replacement desktops.

Worldwide PC sales are expected to have suffered a record annual drop this year, with numbers forecast to have fallen by 10.1 per cent. According to bean counters at IDC sales will continue falling by another 3.8 per cent next year, before turning slightly positive in the longer term. Sales in 2015 are expected to expand by just 0.1 per cent.

The figures are still large. In 2013 there were 314.2 million PCs sold worldwide, 178.6 million of which were laptops. This is down from the total of 349.4 million PCs sold in 2012. But by 2017 this figure is expected to be just 305.1 million, declining again after the negligible growth predicted for 2015. IDC blames a lack of interest in PCs from consumers as the reason for the fall. The Apple press machine claims that this is due to everyone switching to mobile, but the reality is that most consumers don’t need a new PC when the economy is in trouble and they need a tablet for Internet surfing.

Commercial sales are down by just 5 per cent, and the indications are that companies remain unconvinced that tablets can replace desktops. Corporate replacement programmes to upgrade machines before Windows XP loses Microsoft support in 2014 are also thought to be buoying sales in the short-term.

Jay Chou, senior research analyst for IDC, which compiled the data for its Worldwide Quarterly PC Trackers said that the chief concern for future PC demand is a lack of reasons to replace an older system. The PC remains the primary computing device but PC usage is nonetheless declining each year as more devices become available.